The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony: Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883-84, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1887, pages 379-468Matthews, Washington
Religion
The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony: Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883-84, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1887, pages 379-468
Matthews, Washington
Mountainway (Navajo rite); Navajo Indians -- Rites and ceremonies
14. Next day they traveled up the stream to a place called Tse‘çqàka,
and here again they halted for the night. This place is noted for its
deposits of native salt. The travelers cut some out from under a great
rock and filled with it their bags, made out of the skins of the
squirrels and other small animals which they had captured. Thence they
followed up the river to Tse‘¢ezá‘ (Rock Sticking Up), and thence to
Çisyà-qojòni (Beautiful Under the Cottonwoods), where they remained a
day and killed two rabbits. These they skinned, disemboweled, crushed
between two stones, bones and all, so that nothing might be lost, put
them into an earthen pot to boil, and when they were sufficiently cooked
they added some powdered seeds to make a thick soup; of all this they
made a hearty meal. The Navajo then had neither horses nor asses; they
could not carry stone metates when they traveled, as they do now; they
ground their seeds with such stones as they could find anywhere. The old
man advised that they should cross the river at this point and he
directed his sons to go to the river and look for a ford. After a time
they returned and related that they had found a place where the stream
was mostly knee deep, and where, in the deepest part, it did not come
above their hips, and they thought all would be able to cross there. The
father named the hour of bihilçòhigi (when it gets warm, i.e., about 10
a.m.), on the morrow, as the time they should ford the San Juan; so
next morning at the appointed time they crossed. They traveled up the
north bank until they came to a small affluent whose source was in
[¢]epéntsa. Here they left the main river and followed the branch until
night approached, when they made camp.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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